And I still haven't made it all the way home yet - I'm at Josh's house, surrounded by gigantic snow drifts you can't see over. Not sure how to get back home from here...

Anyways, con was fun, though it lasted far longer than anyone expected it to ^^; I guess I'll just recap in sequence...

Friday morning, as usual, woke up later than usual. Did a post office run, but ended up coming a little short, so I had to send the contract and invoice to ADV via standard mail rather than Priority as planned. Jascii's singles still went out Priority, though... went home, and carpy arrived before I got a chance to pack ^^; Started packing up while carpy watched some TV (sorry about that!!), and we immediately departed for Montgomery Mall (playing some DDR GBC on the way). Took care of my business there (deposited $30 check, cashed paycheck, and exchanged CCS GN7 for one that had the Sakura card, yay!), and we headed off.

Arrived at Katsucon, did the reg line, and went to the dealers' room after I was done. (Carpy would be occupied longer since he did not pre-reg...) Bought MT GN1 and an entirely too expensive 6-page PitaTen 2003 calendar. ^^; Eventually met up with Mariela, Patrick, David, carpy, etc, and went to David's room. Eventually left, and got stuff out of carpy's car. However, since Patty was arriving late, I had nowhere to put it, so I ended up just dragging it all to the game room, where I would stay for the rest of the night ^^; We ended up using my PS2 + DDR MAX J for the tournament qualifiers station, and someone else's JPS2 + my PPP game+controllers for another station... for the rest of the night ^^; So I was in the game room for the entire night. Though Patty did eventually come eventually to pick up my stuff, and later to deliver food ^^;;

Woke up around 8:30 on Saturday morning to go to the early, early morning panels (ugh), though at least at the ADV panel I won a copy of Nuku Nuku by answering a Princess Nine trivia question ^^; Not much in particular really happened after that, more dealers' room, more game room, and some napping in the hotel room ^^; Eventually, went down and saw Dave among others ^^; Eventually, that led to me being able to enter the cosplay hall, skipping the lines and sitting in the area set aside for press ^^;; Watched Mariela and Patrick's cosplay skit... they won best in class, yay! Can't recall doing anything significant after that...

Sunday, woke up early again, but still missed some of the early panel (again)... it was starting to snow quite heavily, and it was apparently decided that we would not be checking out that night, but staying another night. Finished up with the panels, ate, etc... and people started to realize that people weren't going to be able to leave ^^; The con was now stuck, and the video rooms had shut down, so there was officially nothing to do, until they opened up the room for the Artist Alley for everything... that room officially became Katsucon 9.1 o.O Until 8am on Tuesday, every aspect of the con was re-produced in that room - David even wanted to hold an ADV panel but couldn't find anything he could get away with announcing ^^; Once again, I ended up using my PS2 and stuff in this room over Sunday night (more like Monday morning) and sleeping down there until I closed it up at 10am.

I got back up to the hotel room, but only to be told that, thanks to Maddy's father's apparent lack of concern for everyone's safety (and caring only about a CAR. A STUPID CAR.), everyone had to return, and since I was completely off the path of travel, I was stuck without a ride. Ken was leaving too, deciding they would attempt to get as close to home as possible. I ended up checking my baggage in with the hotel, where, for the most part, it remained until I left today... mostly hung around with David, Mariela, Patrick, Adam, etc that were also stuck. At one point, David went into DVD give-away mode (he put on his "What Would You Do For An Anime DVD?" badge and started carrying around 4 random ADV titles)... amusingly, many people commented on the badge, that liked the artwork and design, but didn't pick up on the fact that it was literal ^^; He ended up giving the free DVDs to us in the elevator since apparently no one else was going to give it a try... I got another free DVD, this time ZoE Dolores,I DVD3 ^^ Basically, the con continued inside that little room - we even got ahold of the Katsucon AMV contest, so we got to watch that...

An amusing moment happened when we were hanging around in the alcove under the escalator on the ballroom level... we hung around there quite often, and there was a monitor and keyboard there, and we assumed that there was a computer behind the locked cabinet of the desk ^^; One day, I actually decided to reach into the back, and first, I managed to pull out a 2-way radio, then the carrying case that went with it ^^; A little more reaching around, and we actually powered on the computer =P The workstation was running Windows 98 so we were able to get to the shell without any problems, but since we weren't logged in, we couldn't actually reach the internet outside. It was fun playing with that workstation though. =P Of course, we shut it off and put everything back when we were done... more or less ^^;

Through donations, the con was actually able to provide a full dinner free of coast using supplies purchased from the grocery ^^; We opted to do something else, though, so for dinner, David, Mariela, Patrick, Adam, b00ga (I think), and I went out in the direction of Chili's. (Gareth stayed behind, stating he would get McDonald's later.) We got there, and found that it was closed... along with the Chinese place and the Italian place nearby ^^; We ended up going to a Sports Bar and eating there... was actually probably the best meal of the weekend ^^; Hotel food got old after a while, especially after using the breakfast buffet twice, a dinner buffet once, and purchasing many $3 muffins ^^;;

Although I had made arrangements to sleep in Isa's room, I ended up going over there at around 12:30am - they were actually in the next hotel over, not in the Hyatt that the con was in... I went up to the door, but saw no light coming from it, nor was there any noise, so I assumed they were asleep, and decided not to bother them. So, I retrieved my sleeping bag from the baggage check, and prepared to sleep in the alcove under the escalator. ^^;

Was woken up at 8am, though... at the same time that the mini-con room was being broken down as well. Time to go home, apparently... everyone who hadn't left already was making preparations to do so. Naturally, I couldn't catch a ride with any of them ^^; The first thing I did that morning was to go eat at the breakfast buffet... when I left, David was there looking in. We talked for a little bit... though he went back to his hotel room later. I went to the business center to attempt to find people via IRC - turned out to be a very costly venture, at $7.50 for 15 minutes o.O Not much luck, but I got a few more phone numbers... Slept a while, and when I woke up, David was next to me, as if I had planned it that way o.O He had been going stir-crazy in his room with Mariela and Gareth gone, so he came down, saw me sleeping on a seat in the lobby, and took a position near that o.O

Patrick and Grace (who was Bandai's representative this time, and she's a lot cuter than Jerry =P) joined us, though Grace wasn't going to come down because she had been jogging ^^; She did eventually, though, and we chatted as a group for a bit, though I was randomly running off tracking down people that could potentially give me a ride home. Apparently, she's still stuck in the hotel as I type, since her flight isn't until tomorrow morning o.O She eventually left to finish her jogging, and I eventually saw David and Patrick off - both of them heading to the airport. Of course, I was still stuck, since my last resort, calling Chris and seeing if I could get picked up to go over there, was still very much stuck in his house o.O I ended up spotting a group of people that were on their way to the Metro, so I decided to accompany them. I accompanied them as far as where the Yellow line met the Red line, then we parted ways since they had to take the Red line in the other direction. I took the Red line to Twinbrook, and made it to Josh's house... and here I am ^^;

Well, so far, we've watched the entire disc of Nuku Nuku that I won... and Josh just stopped playing Zelda Octarina of Time on his Gamecube. They should have done something better with the conversion there... now, I'm gonna see about actually getting home, rather than just sitting here all day o.O